Above: Mohandas Gandhi, before he cleaned up his public image. [Courtesy: TIME Magazine.]
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Was Mohandas Gandhi A Racist?
RAMA LAKHSMI, The Washington Post
Was Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, the leader of India’s freedom movement, a racist?
A new book by two South African university professors reveals shocking details about Gandhi’s life in South Africa between 1893 and 1914, before he returned to India.
During his stay in South Africa, Gandhi -- [a Hindu who also strived all his life to protect the privileges of the so-called 'high-caste' Hindus in India] -- routinely expressed “disdain for Africans,” says S. Anand, founder of Navayana, the publisher of the book titled “The South African Gandhi: Stretcher-Bearer of Empire.”
According to the book, Gandhi described black Africans as “savage,” “raw” and living a life of “indolence and nakedness,” and he campaigned relentlessly to prove to the British rulers that the Indian community in South Africa was superior to native black Africans. The book combs through Gandhi’s own writings during the period and government archives and paints a portrait that is at variance with how the world regards him today.
Much of the halo that surrounds Gandhi today is a result of clever repackaging, write the authors, Ashwin Desai and Goolam Vahed, professors at the University of Johannesburg and the University of KwaZulu Natal.
“As we examined Gandhi’s actions and contemporary writings during his South African stay, and compared these with what he wrote in his autobiography and 'Satyagraha in South Africa,' it was apparent that he indulged in some ‘tidying up.' He was effectively rewriting his own history.”
Prize-winning Indian author Arundhati Roy says the book, which will hit stores next month, is “a serious challenge to the way we have been taught to think about Gandhi.”
Here is a sample of what Gandhi said about black South Africans:
* One of the first battles Gandhi fought after coming to South Africa was over the separate entrances for whites and blacks at the Durban post office. Gandhi objected that Indians were “classed with the natives of South Africa,” who he called the kaffirs, and demanded a separate entrance for Indians.
“We felt the indignity too much and … petitioned the authorities to do away with the invidious distinction, and they have now provided three separate entrances for natives, Asiatics and Europeans.”
* In a petition letter in 1895, Gandhi also expressed concern that a lower legal standing for Indians would result in degenerating "so much so that from their civilised habits, they would be degraded to the habits of the aboriginal Natives, and a generation hence, between the progeny of the Indians and the Natives, there will be very little difference in habits, and customs and thought."
* In an open letter to the Natal Parliament in 1893, Gandhi wrote:
“I venture to point out that both the English and the Indians spring from a common stock, called the Indo-Aryan. … A general belief seems to prevail in the Colony that the Indians are little better, if at all, than savages or the Natives of Africa. Even the children are taught to believe in that manner, with the result that the Indian is being dragged down to the position of a raw Kaffir.”
* At a speech in Mumbai in 1896, Gandhi said that the Europeans in Natal wished “to degrade us to the level of the raw kaffir whose occupation is hunting, and whose sole ambition is to collect a certain number of cattle to buy a wife with, and then, pass his life in indolence and nakedness.”
* Protesting the decision of Johannesburg municipal authorities to allow Africans to live alongside Indians, Gandhi wrote in 1904 that the council “must withdraw the Kaffirs from the Location. About this mixing of the Kaffirs with the Indians, I must confess I feel most strongly. I think it is very unfair to the Indian population and it is an undue tax on even the proverbial patience of my countrymen.”
* In response to the White League’s agitation against Indian immigration and the proposed importation of Chinese labour, Gandhi wrote in 1903: “We believe also that the white race in South Africa should be the predominating race.”
* Gandhi wrote in 1908 about his prison experience: “We were marched off to a prison intended for Kaffirs. There, our garments were stamped with the letter “N”, which meant that we were being classed with the Natives. We were all prepared for hardships, but not quite for this experience. We could understand not being classed with the whites, but to be placed on the same level with the Natives seemed too much to put up with.”
* In 1939, Gandhi justified his counsel to the Indian community in South Africa against forming a non-European front: “I have no doubt about the soundness of my advice. However much one may sympathise with the Bantus, Indians cannot make common cause with them.”
[Courtesy: The Washington Post. Edited for sikhchic.com]
September 3, 2015
Conversation about this article
1: Baldev Singh (Bradford, United Kingdom), September 03, 2015, 10:00 PM.
All educated, objective and thinking people know about Gandhi's dark side, especially of sexual perversions and his pathological racism directed against blacks.
2: R Singh (Surrey, British Columbia, Canada), September 05, 2015, 12:03 AM.
Gandhi was the Leader of Indians who are know for, what else - hatred of black skin and ... you guessed right, sexual perversions.
3: Kaala Singh (Punjab), September 06, 2015, 2:49 AM.
Gandhi invented the word "Harijan" -- the term used for lower castes, deprived, discriminated and persecuted Hindus to keep them in the Hindu fold because they were converting to other faiths in large numbers and this threatened the numerical superiority of Hindus and hence the hegemony of high-caste Hindus exactly the same way as the Whites in USA invented the term "African-American" for the Blacks to keep them in the Christian fold and give them a feeling that they "belong". There was a time when the Blacks were converting to Islam in large numbers. Large scale conversions threaten the social structures built over hundreds of years. A similar thing is happening in Punjab, where the so-called "lower" castes, having suffered at the hands of the so-called "higher" castes, are leaving Sikhism in large numbers and now the ruling class is concerned. The recent survey that there has been a sharp decline in Sikh population in India has sent the alarm bells ringing in the SGPC which is carefully dominated today by the navel-gazers. Bottomline, without the numbers provided by the masses, the corrupt on the top can't sustain their domination and who will they then dominate? In this vote-bank "democracy" where power and influence depends on the ability to buy and sell votes, numbers are important. Did we not see the corupt 'high-up' politicians begging for votes in Dera Sacha Sauda sometime back and the oldest dera in Punjab -- the Radha Swamis, which also holds the rare distinction of being controlled by the self-designated 'higher' ones. All other Deras are run either by 'low-castes' or outsiders who have flocked to Punjab in large numbers and invoke the Sikh scriptures to gain a semblance of acceptability in the local population. Other than this they have nothing to do with Sikhism. All this is pure racism in action!
4: Naridar Singh Dhesi (United Kingdom), September 10, 2015, 7:45 AM.
I truly believe that Gandhi was the inspiration behind the big 'G' in 'Gando'.